


Shake It Up

by aurilly



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: 2012!verse, Confused Loki (Marvel), Identity Porn, Infinity Stones Returned, M/M, Pining, Rescue Missions, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-01
Updated: 2020-04-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:02:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23422885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aurilly/pseuds/aurilly
Summary: Steve knows he shouldn't try to change anything while returning the Stones, but he can't help himself. A certain God of Chaos is willing to help.Loki's in for a wild ride.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Loki, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, Loki & Steve Rogers
Comments: 41
Kudos: 235
Collections: MCU Exchange 2019





	Shake It Up

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lionessvalenti](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lionessvalenti/gifts).



Steve had no idea where Thor had left Mjolnir in this time, but it didn't matter; it would fly to him whenever and wherever he needed it. Steve guessed that would be pretty soon. 

He would never admit it to anyone but Bucky, but he'd enjoyed wielding the hammer. It had sort of gripped him back every time he swung it, hugged his hand. Steve understood why Thor missed it. Anyone would miss those reassuring surges of tenderness during a battle. Even now, as though it knew Steve was saying goodbye, the leather of the handle sent a warm sensation of comfort into his palm. He set it down on the balcony's smooth marble floor and mentally checked it off as 'returned'.

Five items down, two to go.

Bucky was supposed to have been standing guard outside Jane's door, but Steve had heard voices while releasing the Aether back into her sleeping body. Bucky must have hidden nearby in order to keep suspicion away from Steve. He'd be back.

In the quiet moment afforded him, Steve reminisced about how much unexpected fun he'd had on this mission—the first real, planned mission Steve and Bucky had undertaken together since the war, just the two of them. Exploring time and space together couldn't have been less like 'old times', and yet, Steve felt reinvigorated, hopeful for the first time about the life they'd return to, back in the future. They'd shared the satisfaction of seeing Red Skull stuck in a hell worse than any revenge Steve could have cooked up (and had thrown a few punches anyway, because it felt right). They'd mocked Quill's awful dance moves. They'd oohed and ahhed at the beauty of Asgard together. 

Camp Lehigh had been the only troublesome stop. Seeing the faces of the Hydra agents who had tortured him had left Bucky worryingly quiet. He'd gotten so worked up that he'd almost collided into Peggy in a stairwell. Steve had watched from a shadow as Peggy paused, both her walk and the sentence she'd been in the middle of, to look back at the figure in the overcoat and tilted down hat, before shaking her head at the impossibility of it all. It was all Steve had been able to do not to hug Bucky right there. 

Right on cue, Bucky rounded a corner and into view. He paused to stare over the balcony at the glittering bay, where a spaceship was materializing with a shimmer, right on time. In his flesh hand, he carried the case holding the scepter. Under his metal arm, he was hauling a heavy-looking wooden crate—what it contained or where Bucky had found it, Steve couldn't guess—and he looked grave, even graver than usual. 

Steve assumed that Bucky, like himself, hated leaving. They both knew the fight that was coming for these people, not only today, but a few years from now. But they'd been lectured, and lectured again, and lectured some more, with threatening fingers wagged in their stubborn faces, not to change anything. 

Steve took one last look at the hammer and then asked, "Everything okay?" 

Bucky turned his head and nodded slowly, in a way that must have been to himself, but which seemed strangely off. Steve forgot to wonder what or who he was nodding at, however, because Bucky's profile, with his hair wisping across his face, was one of many angles that made Steve's heart beat fastest. Bucky was always beautiful, but especially here, under this more golden sun. Steve was still getting used to looking at Bucky again, not only in general, but at this latest, cured incarnation of him. A Bucky free of the terror and exhaustion that had dampened his natural glow since Azzano, but still in possession of the physical changes that Steve guiltily found so attractive.

Steve remembered to dislodge the slack longing he could feel settling into his facial muscles just in time, before Bucky looked away from the view and back to him. 

"I was starting to worry," he made himself say calmly. "You run into any trouble while I was with Foster?"

"No, I was fine," Bucky answered a little distractedly. "You didn't need me, and I wanted to explore."

Steve shrugged off this weird mood of Bucky's. After all, they'd had a long, weird day consisting of multiple days on a variety of planets. If ever there was a time for a mood, it was now.

"What's that?" Steve asked, pointing at the crate. 

"I figured I'd get Thor a souvenir. I remember him saying something about where the cellar was located. I tracked it down." Bucky hitched the box more securely under his arm, as if challenging Steve to try to get him to leave it.

Leave it to Bucky to locate wine cellars in a palace on a planet he'd only been on for half an hour. But Bucky had always had a nose for this sort of thing. The Howlies had eaten and drunk very well during the war, thanks to his sixth sense for finding treats. Jacques had called him the 'Truffle Hunter'.

"I don't think we're allowed to bring things back."

"I don't think a little wine is going to break the space-time continuum. And he deserves something nice." 

"I guess it's all right," Steve wasn't going to fight Bucky on this, not when Bucky was making an effort to befriend Steve's team. Of all the Avengers, Steve hadn't expected Bucky to take to Thor so particularly, nor for Thor to take to Bucky so affectionately. However, in the days since everyone's return, every minute Bucky wasn't spending with Steve, he'd spent with Thor. 

"I don't like it," Bucky said as he walked closer to Steve, "but we should probably get going."

Steve took one last look around and nodded. On a count of three, they activated their suits and Pym particles, just as the first blasts hit the palace.

These white suits itched something awful, but the now-familiar, full-body tingle Steve felt as they plummeted into and out of the quantum realm provided a pleasant relief. He savored it now, since, if all went well, it would be the next to last time he ever experienced it.

They 'landed', as planned, on one of the empty, windswept blocks between the U.N. and the NYU hospital, a few long blocks east of the center of activity. A lone alien creature—Steve had never been clear on whether the things with guns or the space sharks, or both, counted as 'Chitauri', and he didn't much care—floated towards them. However, Steve knew there had been no injuries or significant property damage over here, so Steve ignored it. It would all be over soon enough. 

Steve had picked these coordinates because of the unlikelihood of anyone spotting them. He led Bucky to an abandoned storefront whose metal roller door had been covered with graffiti. Bucky snapped the lock and rolled it up far enough to break the glass on the front door and shove the box of wine, along with their time suits, inside. 

"How are you going to get downtown?" Steve asked when they were ready, he with the scepter in its briefcase and Bucky with the time stone in his pocket.

"Was the IRT still running, even with…?" Bucky gestured at the creatures in the sky. 

"Yeah. They only stop the subway for blizzards. And they call the trains by numbers now. No one says IRT anymore," Steve explained.

"Really? Huh." Bucky blinked, but accepted the information with the quiet processing with which he accepted everything these days. "Bleeker Street's still where I remember it, though, right?"

"Yeah. Funny enough, Strange's place is across the street from that cheese store your mom liked. The cheese store is still there, too."

"I remember where that was. Meet you back here, in a couple of hours?"

"You think it'll take that long?"

"Maybe I want to take the scenic route, buy a wheel of parmesan. It's been awhile." Bucky squeezed Steve's shoulder, massaging deep into muscles that hadn't relaxed in years. "There are three of you in this neighborhood right now. Seems primed for a disaster."

"Or a party."

Bucky shook his head at that. "You'd all need to find some Asgardian-strength booze for that."

"Good thing we've got some. Anyway, good luck."

"You, too."

Steve watched Bucky start walking downtown, and decided that, no, _that_ was America's ass. It took everything he had not to run headlong after him. He probably would have, too, if he hadn't spent the entire mission mulling over a crazy plan that he could only start to enact right now. 

Bucky had told him, when they'd been planning this mission, that, by an unfunny coincidence, he'd actually been in New York on the day the aliens came. The Hydra agents on whom Loki had used the scepter had been dutiful servants, indeed. When Loki had asked them to corral their most powerful assets to his service, they'd broken into the Winter Soldier's storage facility in D.C. and brought him to their master in New York. Loki had, understandably, not expected this particular kind of 'asset'. And, what with everything else going on, he probably didn't have time to come up with an imaginative use for him. All Bucky remembered, he'd said, was Loki freaking out and having him sent to a secure room somewhere in the tower. Eventually, the Hydra agents who'd brought him had had their brainwashing treated and smuggled him back to D.C.

It physically hurt Steve to know they'd been so close. If only he'd known, he could have freed Bucky two whole years earlier, could have avoided ever working for Hydra himself. Hell, if he'd known even a few days ago, when he'd been here with Scott and everyone, all the space-time continuum lectures in the world might not have been able to stop him from saving Bucky then.

At least he could save him now. This was the plan he'd refrained from telling anyone. Even Bucky. This was why he'd saved this stop for last, a selfish reward.

In a way, Loki had provided them with a gift. Yes, they still needed to return the scepter and the time stone, but as far as Steve understood (not that he understood much about all this), Loki's escape had created a new timeline. Which meant this was the one stop where Steve could thumb his nose at all the lectures and do what he wanted. 

If Tony, with one of the most famous faces in the world, could blend in while in a room with _himself_ , Steve figured he'd be able to stay under the radar, too. Close to the Tower, he knocked out a SHIELD agent and took his uniform and building access pass. Not even Pepper, who shared an elevator with him for a few floors, gave him a second glance.

He stashed the briefcase with the scepter behind the bar on the top floor—a room SHIELD had already gone over with a fine-toothed comb, and therefore wouldn't check again—and headed back down to the lobby.

He took his position with the other guards standing near Loki and watched the fiasco play out. As soon as the Tesseract went flying, he got ready. He let Loki pick it up and threw his arms around him just in time to feel the pull of the cube transport them together. 

While they were still in the blue mists of the magical in-between, Steve wrested the Cube from a very confused Loki and snapped a pair of magnetic handcuffs that he'd brought with him from the future, just in case. By the time they rematerialized, Steve had entirely taken control of his prisoner.

Steve pushed Loki to the ground with his boot and kept his foot on his throat while he looked around. 

"So, _this_ is where you went," he said, when he recognized the view from the window as a more peaceful version of the one he and Bucky had been looking at only a few minutes ago. The only difference was the Bifrost, which looked like it was undergoing renovations. 

They were in a huge, warm, surprisingly messy room covered in dust and scattered books, as well as the thick gold carvings that seemed requisite for all Asgardian interiors. Although it was cozier—more lived in—than any of the other rooms Steve had peeped into, it seemed that no one had lived in it for awhile, given all the dust.

"This is your room, isn't it?" Steve conjectured out loud.

Loki still wore the gag, but his expression conveyed an amusing sequence of annoyance, surprise, murderous rage, confusion, and then back to annoyance.

"You're wondering how I can recognize Asgard," Steve continued, aware that Loki couldn't respond, and kind of having fun with it. Loki wasn't on his list of top threats or grievances, not anymore, and Coulson wasn't even dead… but it still felt good to stick it him, just a little bit, for what he'd done in New York.

Loki had stopped scrabbling at the ground by now, probably because he'd realized it was no use with the handcuffs. He simply stared up at Steve with hilariously furious eyes.

"It's a long story," Steve said next. "And it doesn't really matter. What matters is that I'm here to make a deal with you."

Loki made a face that said, pretty plainly, "I didn't know you made deals."

And he wasn't wrong. The Steve of that time would never have been able to choke out those words, but Steve had spent enough time with Thor since then to have learned there was more to Loki than had been evident at the time. Hell, even Bruce had sort of befriended the guy. Or, well, the Hulk had, which, these days, amounted to the same thing. Steve didn't trust Loki farther than he could throw him, but he had an idea of how to keep him in line (and he could throw pretty far).

"I know you have wards set up against intruders that you can activate as soon as you get your voice back. Including a cute booby trap that'll tickle me until I can't stand." Steve smiled smugly at Loki's shocked reaction, because Thor hadn't discovered that particular gem until _after_ all this, and therefore there was no way he could have told Steve about it. "So, here's my proposal. I take us somewhere else, you hear me out, and if you help me, I'll let you go. I'll even let you take the Tesseract. If not, I can take the Tesseract back to Earth and leave you here for your dad to find you. Or maybe take you to Jotunheim."

The dumbfounded look on Loki's face was more priceless than anything Steve had ever seen. 

"I guess you'd rather come with me."

Loki nodded vigorously. Steve grabbed him with one arm, and took hold of the Tesseract with the other. He'd never actually used one of the Stones before, but he'd understood enough of Thor's instructions to Bruce a few days ago to know they worked mostly on will and faith. He pictured where he wanted to go, willed it hard, and trusted it to work. A second later, he could feel the mystical cloud pushing outwards and moving them back through the in-between.

They arrived on the roof of Stark Tower. Steve kept the handcuffs on Loki, but unlocked the gag. Within seconds, that smooth, mocking voice started in on him. 

"Back here? How tiresome." Loki leaned back against the wall and grinned like a loon. "I must say, Captain, I would never in a thousand years have thought you capable of this. A subtle yet effective disguise! Quick thinking. Subterfuge. Negotiating with terrorists. This unexpected knowledge of Asgard. Wielding cosmic magic. You're so much more exciting than I imagined," he said, raking his eyes up and down Steve's body with undisguised interest.

"Stop it. You're here because I need your help."

"The cause must be momentous indeed."

"Earlier today, SHIELD agents brought you an asset, an asset who was a person. The Winter Soldier. You told them to secure him away somewhere in this building. I need you to tell me where he is and help me break him out. If you do this, I'll let you go and let you have the Tesseract, on one condition. That you never try to take over Earth, or any other planet again, and that you never try to harm me or my friends."

"The metal-armed mute? _That's_ what this is about?" Loki asked. "You continue to shock, Captain."

"Yes or no, Loki," Steve growled.

"Yes, yes, of course yes. I have hardly any other options, do I? It's this or the cold revenge of Jotunheim. But I can assure you, I have no real desire to take over your annoying little planet. I never really did. It was only because—"

"Because that was what Thanos was giving you in return for your services. Because he'd have killed you if you'd refused to try."

Loki froze, and asked, with real fear, "What do you know of Thanos?"

"Probably more than you, at this point."

Loki leaned forward, hungry, but not as unhinged as he'd been earlier this afternoon, years ago. 

"Again. Fascinating. But I ask you: once you have him, what is it you intend to do with the fellow? He's pretty, I'll grant you, but hardly the world's greatest conversationalist. Merely a crude tool, horrifically broken. Possibly the most unpleasant gift I have ever been offered."

For as much of a dick as Loki was, he sounded almost sad about what he'd seen with Bucky. 

"Once we've got my friend," Steve said, "you're going to use the scepter to erase his brainwashing and bring back his memories."

"Only a friend?" Loki asked, teasing. "Come now, don't undersell this touching romance. The valiant super-soldier and his brainwashed love. I think I've read a play like that. Or perhaps I shall write it."

"It isn't like that," Steve snapped, but unfortunately, Loki's princely hauteur was a match for Steve's captain's tone.

"Isn't it?" When Steve didn't answer, Loki shrugged and gestured at his handcuffs. "Shall we? Your 'friend' is being held on the twenty-third floor, in a laboratory specializing in containment experiments."

"These aren't coming off. I know you can make people look like other people. You can make it look like you're a Hydra agent who isn't wearing handcuffs." 

Loki nodded, admitting defeat. He clapped the tips of his fingers, since they were the only parts of his hands that could clap.

"Cleverer and cleverer. This will be quite the adventure we're going on, you and I. It's astounding how different you seem from only a few minutes ago. So much more entertainingly flexible and mysterious. Not so lost, nor out of time. It's as though someone has energized you out of the dullness from which I had begun to think you never deviated. Everything you've said until now sounded like awful bits recited from some tiresome hero's manual. But you do have some wit, don't you?"

Steve, who until now hadn't thought he'd changed at all in the past ten years, grimaced. Part of him didn't want to accept any observations that someone like Loki had to make. But on the other hand, it was nice to hear that maybe he _had_ grown, become more comfortable in his new skin and century. 

Steve put the observations aside in favor of laying out his intended plan, without mentioning anything about being from the future and what had happened there. What Steve wanted to do was easily explained, and Loki was a quick study.

"This explains so much of the past week," said Loki, who seemed intent never to shut up. "Some of these Hydra cretins have been my lieutenants this week. I couldn't have asked for a bigger squadron of creeps… that's the right word, isn't it?"

"It's one of them." Steve had to forcibly repress a smile; he had no business being even remotely charmed right now. 

"I'm curious: what _is_ the cure? Another hit with the scepter? Is that what you all did to me while I was unconscious? Because I feel freed of—"

"A really hard blow to the head. That's why you're… better now. For a generous definition of 'better'. You can thank the Hulk for that."

"I see. At any rate, I know who to make us resemble." With a slow blinking of his eyes, Loki shimmered into a perfect recreation of Rumlow.

Steve saw his own hands shimmering with the same light. When it diminished, he looked into the glass walls, and, despite the glare, could just make out Pierce's distinguished features.

"Good job," he said, hearing the Secretary's voice as well. "Let's go." Steve put the Tesseract in his pocket and led them inside, into the same room where he'd hidden the scepter. He got the out of its hiding place. 

" _You_ have it? How?" Loki gasped when he saw it.

Steve merely shoved Loki forward. Together, they made their way down to the twenty-third floor. 

"So, how did you come to befriend the Winter Soldier?" Loki asked conversationally during the elevator ride. "I doubt you met through a dating service." 

Steve resisted the bait. "We grew up together. Fought in the war together. He was my best friend, and he died trying to save me. Or so I thought."

"How did you think he died?"

"He fell, off a cliff. I tried to hold on, I tried so hard, but…"

"But he fell anyway," Loki finished softly, staring sadly at the floor. 

"Turns out, he survived. Hydra found him, took him, gave him the serum. Put bolts in his spine to hold up the arm they grafted to him. They brainwashed him until he forgot who he was or that he had any will of his own. Until he became the man you saw today. They kept him frozen and only took him out for missions. Like they did for you today."

"You speak of all this in the past tense," Loki noted.

Steve saw his slip and tried to fix it with feigned heartiness of the sort that Loki probably expected from him. "Because it's about to be past tense. We're going to save him now."

"Another man out of time. With every detail this becomes more ghastly and yet even more romantic." 

"I told you, it's not like that. We were only friends. He's never cared for me in that way. But if I can shave off even one day of his suffering…" Steve realized only a second too late what he'd said, that he'd failed to fully deny his own feelings. A second and potentially even more dangerous slip. 

Loki was as good at wheedling information out of people as Thor always said he was. Damn him.

"I see." Loki was kind enough not to mention this slip, or, more likely, he was saving a barb for a later, more devastating moment. "And once you free him, what will you do?"

"Nothing." 

"What?" Out of everything, this had gotten the biggest reaction out of Loki.

"He isn't my Bucky to… We're going to free him and then I've got to go."

"But surely..."

"Leave it, Loki," Steve interrupted warningly.

Loki sighed. "How shockingly dull."

They passed Thor in the hallway of the twenty-third floor. 

"Have you found the Tesseract yet?" Loki-as-Rumlow coldly asked, clearly having entirely too much fun with this.

"Not yet, but I can assure you it was merely misplaced during the accident."

"An accident in which you allowed the war criminal to go free," Loki shot back.

Steve shot him a dirty look, and said, as Pierce, "An accident, during which you saved Tony Stark's life. We'll never thank you enough. Check in when you've found it."

Loki huffed quietly, a sound that didn't seem right coming from Rumlow. 

"We will find it, and my brother, I assure you. Both need to return to Asgard," Thor promised. 

"I don't see you looking," Loki said coldly, more Loki than Rumlow, not that Thor knew Rumlow well enough to tell.

Thor, a prince unused to this kind of rudeness from strange soldiers, understandably, growled.

"I'm sure you've got everyone working on it. My team will give you the fullest support," Steve-as-Pierce said quickly, trying to get rid of Thor before Loki caused a scene or gave himself away by teasing too hard. He breathed a sigh of relief when Thor nodded and boarded the departing elevator.

As expected, the soldiers stepped aside when they saw Pierce and Rumlow approach the room in which Loki said they'd locked the Asset. Steve opened the door and nodded to the guards both inside the room and the ones guarding the door. 

"I'm going to need this room cleared, right now," Steve said. He doubted Pierce would have peered around, desperately looking for Bucky, so he restrained himself from doing so, even though he was going out of his mind with worry and anticipation.

"But sir, the Asset is…"

"Rumlow and I can handle the Asset. Everyone. Out. I want you to gather in the lobby and await further instructions. The longer you're all here, the quicker people might realize what's really going on at SHIELD." 

No one dared to grumble as they filed out of the room.

"I believe they put him here," Loki said as soon as they were alone. He pointed at a door leading into a separate office.

Steve flung it open reveal Bucky, strapped to a chair, shirt off, head lowered, and hair obscuring his face. His eyes were open, but his face was so lax and his attitude so passive that Steve could tell he was unconscious. 

"Oh, Bucky." Steve's heart broke. He had never seen Bucky quite like this. Bucky had been resigned when he'd been incarcerated after Vienna, but not like this. 

"Loki, do you know how to work this?" Steve asked, pointing to the scepter.

Loki nodded. "How much do you want me to fix. For example, do you want him to remember what has passed since last he was himself?"

Steve thought, remembering back to _his_ Bucky, who hated what he'd done, but would have hated even more the idea of losing any more of himself—even the parts that hurt.

"I want him to remember everything," Steve said, hoping it was the right decision.

"We should probably change our appearances again. I doubt seeing these two will reassure him. I should make us ourselves again."

"No!" Steve snapped, panicked.

"No?"

"He can't know that I did this for him. It won't make sense." Steve got an idea. "Drop the illusion. Let him see _you_. Loki. Let him think it was you who freed him."

"Well, it _will_ be me who frees him," Loki pointed out. "And you?"

Steve looked down at himself. He couldn't think of anyone who would make sense, so asked, "Can you do invisibility?"

"It is, indeed, the first spell I ever learned."

"No tricks, now."

"No. Not now, at least."

Loki dropped his Rumlow illusion, revealing a surprisingly genuine-looking pained expression on his pale features. "I may be a monster, but I retain some morsel of a heart. I could have made use of this man, you know I could have, but I did not. This… I could sense, even before you explained it to me, that what was done to this man does not constitute the sort of mischief I find entertaining. Even the manner of brainwashing lacks finesse. There is nothing magical here, nothing interesting. Much more interesting will be to see what he is like once free of the thrall. I am curious about the man for whom Captain America would make deals with the likes of me. There must be more to him than simply his pleasing form."

And maybe Steve had grown too trusting, too generous, during the past five awful years when he'd lacked the will to keep his mind wary. Or maybe it was because he was starting to like Loki—starting to wonder if, had things gone differently, he might have appreciated him the way Banner had grown to appreciate him. Or maybe it was the way this message of kindness came laced with an edge of assholery. Either way, Steve believed him.

"And what of after he has come back to himself, since you don't want to reveal yourself?" Loki asked. "I didn't know what to do with him before, and I certainly don't now. Unless you want me to take him with me and leave him somewhere safe when, as agreed, you hand the Tesseract over to me." 

"You really would? Stay with him a little? Take him somewhere safe? Maybe to space?" Steve knew how much Bucky had enjoyed their mission to return the stones; a little bit more of space would make this Bucky happy, and also keep him safe from Hydra (and if there was anyone who could handle Loki as a traveling companion, Steve felt certain it was Bucky).

"Only if you promise me that he'll prove at least passably good company. I know not what to expect from your childhood friend. Is he the source of the tiresome worth for which I initially despised you? Or was his influence responsible for the more interesting man of the past few minutes?"

"Bucky's always been the fun one, the popular one," Steve said immediately, before remembering that the man Bucky had been in recent years—the man that, surprisingly, Steve had fallen so hopelessly, pointlessly, in love with—had changed. "He might be different when he comes out of it, but I think you'd like him. Anyone would," Steve finished, thinking of all the friends Bucky had made in Wakanda, and now with the Avengers.

"We will see." Loki straightened. "If all goes well, this will likely be the last time we speak to or see one another."

"I'll hand you the stone and you can take off. Just, you know, make me visible again somehow before you go too far. And don't tell him anything about seeing me, or working with me to do this. He can't know. Promise me you'll never let him find out." Steve was pleading, pleading with a man who most likely would laugh at the request, either now or in a few days, and do what he wanted anyway, but he had to try. 

As though reading Steve's mind, Loki said, "I know my word counts for little, but I will keep the secret. I don't understand why you want me to keep it, but he will not learn from me about the role you played today. As for my part, it has been diverting, Captain, to have worked with you like this."

Steve didn't think it likely, but he kept that thought to himself. He finally unlocked Loki's handcuffs and gave him the scepter. Loki made a little gesture with his right hand, and suddenly, Steve couldn't see his own arms. 

He watched as Loki gently—more tenderly than strictly necessary—brushed Bucky's hair out of his face and set him to sit straight in the chair. He seemed to go into himself, to be reading something that Steve couldn't see. Bucky remained slack and unresponsive when Loki put a hand to his forehead, as though reading the blankness in his mind.

"This is a horrifying amount of damage," Loki said, after he'd drawn back in what seemed like genuine shock. "You mortals. For such a fragile species, you go out of your way to think of extreme ways to hurt one another. This is infinitely more invasive than anything the scepter could cause."

"But the scepter can fix it?"

"It will take all of my skill in wielding it, but yes. What are the words that trigger the trance?" 

Steve whispered them into Loki's ear. Once Loki had repeated them back to him, Steve said, "If this works, you'll probably take off with him. I won't get to say thanks. So… Thanks."

And, just in case anyone forgot that he was a grade-A asshole, Loki replied, "Thank _you_ for giving me the opportunity of putting yourself in my debt."

Loki placed the scepter gently at the center of Bucky's forehead and went still as he imbued it with power. For a split second, Steve wondered what the hell he'd just done, letting Loki anywhere near Bucky—near the Winter Soldier—letting him hold the scepter, no less. 

But then Bucky's eyes snapped open, and his whole body jolted. When he looked up, his face shone with the bright lucidity that Steve had enjoyed in the past few days, and during the brief visit he'd manage to make to Wakanda before Thanos had shown up. 

"I've seen you before," Bucky said thickly, slowly. "You're..."

"Someone who wishes you no harm. Tell me, do you know your name?"

Bucky slumped his head, but his voice grew clearer. "It's Bucky. Bucky Barnes." His eyes widened in horror as decades of memories crashed together in his head. "Oh god, what have I…"

"Shhhhhh, it is all right. It was not your doing. I should know, having seen the other side of it. No one will ever control you again, I swear it. But first, let me test to ensure the magic worked. Can you feel anything when I say "freight train"?

"Magic?" Bucky muttered instead of panicking as he once did at the words.

Loki continued to test the triggers and to ask questions. Bucky continued to give increasingly clear answers. Steve soon saw enough to feel satisfied. He hated letting Loki take all the credit, hated having Bucky in arms' reach but unable to talk to him, hated that Loki got to receive that grateful glow.

"I believe you are cured, Bucky," Loki said at the end of his interrogation. He undid Bucky's bonds.

"Thanks… Loki. It's Loki, right? Weren't you trying to take over the world? That's what they were talking about, right? Was that recently, or awhile ago? Sometimes I get confused." Bucky didn't stand up right away. He massaged his wrists where the shackles had pinched tightest.

"Yes and no. It's a long, and now wholly unimportant story," Loki said as casually as possible.

"Oh. I see. You lost," Bucky said. "You gonna try again?"

"No," Loki snapped, likely smarting from how quickly Bucky had seen through him.

"That's good."

Steve smiled to himself; he'd been right. Bucky could definitely handle Loki.

"You seem remarkably blasé about my helping you," Loki said next. "Last I saw, your Hydra handlers were presenting you to me. Shouldn't you recoil from me?"

"Yeah, but you weren't interested. That's what matters. And you… I think you were like me, a little. Right? Not quite… not quite you."

"A little," Loki admitted, cringing.

"You're helping me now, and I won't forget it, even though I don't know why you're doing it. There's something in it for you, isn't there?"

"Yes, of course, though I am not obliged to share the details with you."

"All right. I'm… _I'm_ obliged anyway," Bucky said politely. "But we need to get out of here. They'll come back for me. They'll try to…"

"And they will die," Loki said simply, voicing the feeling behind Steve's invisibly clenched fists. "Or, rather, they would if they tried, but they will not, for we will be away from here by the time anyone returns." Loki held out a hand to the place where he knew Steve stood. "And now, with the conditions met…" he said, leadingly.

"Huh?" Bucky asked, understandably confused, since as far as he knew, Loki could only have been speaking to him.

Steve had been staring, hungry and riveted, at this new Bucky. A Bucky who had plenty of trauma to work through, but who would never have to remember hurting Steve, which was the memory _his_ Bucky, currently down on Bleeker Street, had always said was the single most painful. The rational part of Steve was screaming at the danger of leaving Bucky to the tender mercies of _Loki_. But his gut told him that it would be okay, a different path, a new way of healing. 

As he'd promised, Steve placed the Tesseract into Loki's waiting palm, delivering it with a squeeze of fingers that Steve hoped would convey his gratitude. 

Loki placed the scepter on the table.

"Don't you want that?" Bucky asked.

"It is not mine to take. And to tell you the truth, I hate the sight of it. Its power over me outweighed whatever power it gave me. You won't mind if I try to seduce you, would you?" Loki suddenly asked Bucky, clearly for Steve's benefit.

"What?" Bucky asked, confused, as Steve squeezed Loki's arm _hard_ , enough to make him yelp.

"Nothing. Just a little joke. Anyway, it's been a pleasure," Loki said, seemingly to himself, but really to Steve. He pulled him to his feet. "Where would you like to go first? The entire universe is at our disposal."

Bucky stretched as though waking from a terrible nap, and, with a lazy, exhausted shrug that sparked conflicting emotions of joy and jealousy in Steve's heart, he leaned into Loki's side for support. "I don't know about the universe. Just outside of this room would be fine. We're in New York, right?"

"We are."

"I could get some lunch. I haven't eaten anything but protein shakes in years."

"We'll likely need to disguise ourselves, for both you and I—but mostly I—have pursuers rather hot on our tails. But yes, let us leave this building and hide ourselves in the busy streets. This city is full of oddities to explore. For example, I have been looking for a guide to explain to me what a knish is," Loki said.

"All right. Though what I really want is a burger…" 

They both vanished in a blue flash.

Somewhere in the middle of the flash, Steve saw a tendril of green magic reach out to him. As soon as his vision returned, he could see himself again. Loki had released the invisibility on his way out. 

Steve wished he could have joined them for lunch. He wished Thor were here. He wished _his_ Bucky were here.

Speaking of which… It had already been a couple of hours. Almost time to meet Bucky. He packed the scepter back in its case and took it to the office Fury had claimed as his own; he knew that was where it had originally been left. Then he went down to the lobby of the Tower and out onto forty-second street, feeling more optimistic and lighter than he had in years. 

Breaking the rules for the right reasons had always felt good.

* * *

One of the liberating things about space, Bucky had learned today, was how easy it was to blend in. The concept of 'humanoid' encompassed a generous variety, and metallic reinforcements were quite common. But back on Earth, he needed to keep his hand in his pocket, which got uncomfortable real fast; he belatedly wished that Shelley, the Avengers' administrative assistant, had been less concerned with fashion when she'd ordered him these tight black pants. 

Bucky had rarely had reason to visit New York during his years as the Soldier, and even then, he'd mostly stuck to penthouses, office buildings, and high rise hotels, not the West Village. Everything looked familiar and new, jammed together in a way that left him more disoriented than Asgard had. Old buildings in which he'd had job interviews or to which he'd made deliveries back in the 1940s now squeezed between giant glass neighbors. 

The most jarring changes, however, were the smaller ones. A couple of miraculously familiar stores had retained their old signs but updated the interiors to the point of unrecognizability. Old wrought-iron bannisters now encircled differently painted brick, or brownstones turned into hair salons.

On the bright side, at least most of the dog shit was gone. 

Given that Bruce had said he'd found the Ancient One hanging out on the roof, zapping aliens, Bucky didn't expect anyone to answer the doorbell. But he thought it was only polite to try. He counted to thirty, and then climbed up a drainpipe.

She was still at it. Fascinating hand gestures, rounded and deliberate, somehow caused the monsters to jolt and fall—hopefully not on top of any pedestrians. Bucky had a feeling she knew he was watching. Everything about her suggested that, like everyone else he knew these days, she had flair for the dramatic. She took her sweet time turning towards him. 

"I assume you're here to return my stone."

Bucky hoisted himself onto the roof. He placed the stone, in its casing, into her outstretched and expecting palm. "What tipped you off?"

"Your sense of calm and the good health you exude. The years between now and where you come from have been kinder than the past few decades."

Bucky had been dead for five of those years, and asleep for another one. But better to be dead than to _that_. So, he replied, "It hasn't been a picnic, but, yeah, sure." 

He could have asked how she knew who he was. But he was all tapped out on mystical knowledge and smug omnipotence. And he'd missed lunch.

"Tell me. Are congratulations in order?" she asked. "Did it work?

"If it hadn't worked, I'd still be dead, not here." 

"And, despite my entreaties to Banner, it seems that you all failed to keep it all straight."

"You mean Loki." 

"He is right now escaping with the Tesseract," she said lightly. 

"You don't seem that mad about it." 

"I lectured to impress upon you all the importance of care in the matter of time, and to dissuade a cavalier attitude towards meddling. But I may have exaggerated the dangers to make my point."

"So, we didn't actually have to return them? We could have changed things?"

"It is better that you did return them, of course, and that you made efforts to mitigate alterations to the timeline…" She paused to bring down another of the monsters, depositing it neatly in the green space in the middle of a nearby street intersection, before continuing, "So many great geniuses among you, and not a single one realized that nothing inordinately terrible and unbalanced had happened since Thanos destroyed the stones?"

Bucky was no genius, but that _had_ occurred to him. However, it was precisely because he _wasn't_ a genius that he hadn't questioned further.

"So, we don't need to worry about screwing up here?"

"I trust your judgment."

She threw a ball of magic from one hand to another. Bucky had seen a lot of staggeringly, mind-alteringly beautiful things in the past few days—flying horses, the Bifrost at work, the bright blue constellations over Vormeer, Gamora—but the most beautiful remained the golden circles of magic that Strange and Wong, and now the Ancient One, too, made with their hands. He couldn't get enough of them.

She saw him looking. "You find magic beautiful, don't you?"

"Sure," he replied, failing to keep his voice as cool as he wanted. 

"If I'm not mistaken, you carry a little magic with you." 

Bucky patted his pocket. "How can you tell?"

"All magic sends a pulse, a kind of wave that, if you are on the lookout, is easy to sense. Different types of magic send different types of pulses." She changed the subject without changing it at all. "How was dear Frigga when you left her?"

"Worried about her son," Bucky answered honestly. "Worried about the universe."

"As she has right to be."

"You're not gonna stop me, are you?" There was no point in beating around the bush. Bucky could tell that she knew what he'd been planning. Meeting Frigga in that hallway had merely made him feel less guilty about it. 

"Stop you? Not at all. In fact, I'll give you a head start." She opened the Eye so that the green stone peeped out. She made a little hand-motion, and the three monsters currently blocking Bucky's view of midtown suddenly moved backwards and back up the portal fifty or so blocks north.

Bucky could guess what she'd done. But even though he'd spent the day traveling through time, he'd never actually watched it roll back like that. Another beautiful thing to add to his mental catalogue. 

"If you leave now," the Ancient One said, "you can make it back to Midtown at about the same time you left."

"Thanks."

Just before he hopped down the drainpipe again, she called out, "Oh, and Sargent Barnes? You'll be better off jogging. The 4-5-6 line has been stopped due to the attack."

Turned out that Steve having been here—now—before didn't mean he knew everything.

***

Frigga's tracking doo-dad was fucking annoying. It vibrated and shook and practically _pushed_ him where it wanted him to go, poking him insistently in the left butt cheek. Worse than that, it couldn't seem to make up its damn mind. If Bucky hadn't known better, he would have thought _he_ was the one being tracked, because this kind of zig-zagging, double-backing bullshit was the sort of skill he'd honed over decades of missions as the soldier and over two years of paranoid hiding from Hydra.

Bucky had just about written the thing off by the time he'd followed the tracker's directions to the Shake Shack on Broadway, a few long blocks from Stark Tower. Despite the alien attack, it was packed with exhausted New York workers looking for a late lunch. 

Again, it was as though _he_ were the target, not Loki. There was no way the Loki he'd heard so much about was getting a burger. _Bucky_ was the one who wanted a burger, who always wanted a burger, especially from here. He had craved Shake Shack since that one time, back in 2007 when the Winter Soldier had tasted their signature offering at the original location in Madison Square Park, in between assassinations, and while his handlers' backs were turned. The only real food he'd eaten in decades.

Bucky had only seen Loki once, for a few, hazy, brainwashed minutes. He remembered a pale, sweaty guy whose clothes looked uncomfortably heavy for his thin frame. A man of his depth and terrified. Bucky's only real reaction (muted, of course, as all his reactions back then had been) was that he didn't look like much of an alien, and also that he might even have looked nice, if only he'd pull that stick out of his ass and wash his hair. Other than that, everything Bucky knew about the guy, he'd heard from the guys _mom_ a few minutes ago, and from Thor, whose rose-colored grief glasses might not have been the most reliable source of information. So, he didn't quite know what to expect.

But whatever he might have expected, it wasn't to find Loki at the condiment and soda bar, making a mess of the ketchup dispenser and getting Dr Pepper everywhere except in his giant paper cup. Like an idiot. Or, more generously, like an alien who'd never eaten fast food before. He'd disguised himself as a civilian in dark wool pants and a green turtleneck, but Bucky would have recognized that long, pale face and those black locks anywhere. He strode over and grabbed Loki firmly by the arm.

Loki startled, but recovered quickly, as soon as he looked at Bucky's face. He leaned awkwardly against the counter, clearly trying to hide the mess he'd made. A little wave behind his back made it disappear. A harried-looking mother standing nearby did a double take, but shrugged and went on pouring her coke. 

Casually, as though they knew one another, as though they'd been in the middle of a conversation, Loki asked, "What are you doing? I thought you were getting a table. Don't tell me you've been scooped."

"What?" Bucky had no idea what the guy was talking about.

"What?" Loki asked right back.

"You know who I am, right?" Bucky asked, because Loki's casual reaction to Bucky talking to him didn't make sense. He should have been more surprised to see him, or confused, given that just a few hours ago, Loki had encountered Bucky at his lowest. They didn't know one another, but Loki was sort of acting like they did.

Loki started to look concerned, and grabbed Bucky's chin, turning his head this way and that in order to look into his eyes. "Is the trance returning? You seem to have regained yourself but—"

Well, that proved he knew who Bucky was, at least, and could tell by looking at him that he'd recovered and what exactly he'd recovered from.

Whatever was going on, getting Loki to talk to him and trust him was playing out easier than Bucky had feared it might, so he went with it.

"I'm fine. But we need to get out of here," Bucky said.

"We only just got here!"

"Yeah, but I need your help."

"I'm aware. Why else do you think I'm braving this ordeal?" Loki asked, gesturing at the ketchup and mustard dispensers, and restaurant in general.

"No idea. But if you come, I'll make it worth your while."

Loki perked up at that, and looked at him appraisingly. "Interesting. Care to explain exactly how? Or are the details inappropriate for this public venue?"

"Oh, for Pete's sake." It wasn't that Loki wasn't attractive, especially now that he'd changed out of that gaudy get-up and looked like he had, indeed, unclenched a little. He looked… better… than he had in Bucky's memory. Less sweaty, more sane. In different circumstances, and if he hadn't been gone on Steve since the war, he might have… 

Anyway, he had bigger things to think about right now. 

Bucky dragged Loki bodily out the side door. Not even Loki's squawking could cover up the way Bucky's stomach growled. He'd have to come back, maybe later, with Steve. Maybe even with Loki, too, so he could show the guy how to use a soda fountain.

"I don't see the rush, not when we are equally ravenous," Loki complained. "That knish was barely enough to sustain me, and I had been looking forward to trying the shake."

"We need to get back to the Tower."

"Eternally, this tower. I grow sick of its ugly interiors." Loki looked at Bucky, really looked at him for the first time. "When did you change clothes?" 

Bucky figured he meant since they'd last seen one another, years ago for Bucky, a couple of hours ago for Loki.

"Off a civilian just before I came to grab you," Bucky lied. "In the bathroom line."

"You are very quick," Loki noted with a nod. "And suddenly so much more willful. I like it. So, what is it that you need?" 

"You know who Captain America is, right?" 

"We've met," Loki said slowly, evasively, even though it shouldn't have been a secret. Of course they'd met; the whole world had seen them fighting, both a few days ago and just now. "Why do you ask?"

"He's a friend of mine. You didn't know that?"

"No, of course not. What… what a small world! Ha!" Loki laughed in a strange, forced manner.

Weirdo.

Bucky remembered how Loki had looked into his head that day when the Hydra agents had brought him to serve. He had been able to feel an intrusion into his mind—invasive, yes, but painless and dreamlike, a relief, frankly, from his normal day-to-day—and could tell that Loki had been scanning something. It was after finishing his magical scan that he'd gone cold with horror and had them take Bucky away. 

No matter what he'd done—and it sounded like a _lot_ —the look of sympathy in Loki's eyes had left Bucky unable to hate Loki's the memory the way other people did. 

"But the real question," Loki said, with a mischievous twinkle in his eye, "is how _good_ of a friend?" He sounded genuinely curious, which meant he'd missed everything about Steve during his brief—and probably frustrating—glance through Bucky's mind that day. He waggled his eyebrows suggestively. 

Okay, maybe Bucky _did_ hate him.

"Just friends," he replied through gritted teeth. "It isn't like that. He never… We never… It's not like that." 

"He protests too hard, methinks," Loki teased. 

"Don't be annoying."

"But it's my strongest quality. Tell me, when did you first begin to develop—"

"I have a letter for you," Bucky interrupted, stopping Loki's prodding. He reached into his jacket and pulled out the envelope.

At the sight of just the paper and the seal, Loki went very still. "Where did you get this?" 

Frigga hadn't told Bucky what to say to such a direct question, and Bucky hadn't yet worked out how much he wanted to tell Loki about who he was and where he'd come from, so all he said was, "All that matters is that it's for you." 

Loki snatched the envelope and opened a mysteriously seamless edge with a weird trick that Bucky didn't quite catch. He devoured the words—all three pages of them—in the space of a traffic light. He magicked away a few tears, but not before Bucky had seen them start to form in the corner of his eye. He might as well not have bothered, because his chin trembled enough to give his emotions away. 

For the so-called 'God of Lies', the guy had no poker face.

When he was done, Loki carefully refolded the paper and slid it back into the envelope, which closed up again on its own. Slipping it into his pants pocket, he took a deep breath and said, "Thank you for this."

"No problem," Bucky said, nodding that it was time for them to cross. All around them, people were slowly calming down, getting back to business. The attack had clearly stopped, and there was nothing more comforting to a New Yorker than getting back to business. 

"Among other things, she says that I am to aid you in any quest for which you wish to recruit me, and follow you where you lead. That you can be trusted, and that you are worthy. I have never heard her say such a thing about a mortal. But I still do not understand how you came into the possession of this, or how you ever met with her, if indeed you…"

"It's a long story."

"I have all the time in the world," Loki said.

"Yeah, but I don't. Look, the first thing I need help with is Steve."

"The direct approach seems to work for my brother. And something tells me your overtures would meet with very little resistance."

"That's not what I'm talking about! I mean, he's been brainwashed. We need to fix it."

Loki grew thoughtful. "Ah. Did it happen recently?"

"Yeah."

"I see. Disappointing as that is to hear, it makes a startling amount of sense." 

"Why do you say that?" Bucky asked.

"No matter. What is your plan?"

"We go back to the Tower and find him. Find a way to snap him out of it. I'm open to ideas."

Loki grinned wide. "Oh, I have a few."

"You can change us into someone else, right?" Bucky asked. "They'll be on the lookout for both of us."

"Any requests? 

"Anyone you like who isn't here. Just for long enough so I can think of something better." 

"Look at the ground," Loki ordered. 

Bucky did as he was asked, and when he looked up again, they were now both wearing SHIELD uniforms. Good.

"Who are we?" he asked, since he didn't recognize the face on the body wearing Loki's outfit.

"Knights I admired during my youth, though the garb of these Hydra vermin does a disservice to their legend."

"Won't Thor recognize these faces?"

"They were merely illustrations in a book he never read." Loki pulled an access pass out of his pocket and let them into the Tower, thus solving at least one of Bucky's worries.

This guy was a useful partner to have, Bucky decided. Proactive, prepared, devoid of shits to give. It was too bad they hadn't had a chance to team up for real, in Bucky's universe. 

They wove through the throngs in the lobby and made their way to the fiftieth-floor atrium that Loki said he'd heard noises about becoming the central SHIELD briefing location. On the way, they passed by Steve, getting off an elevator and carrying a long briefcase. Bucky's—and apparently also Loki's—enhanced hearing was just able to pick up Steve's whispered, "Hail Hydra" as Steve got off the elevator, with a little smile to himself. He practically skipped around the hallway.

Loki's eyes went wide in his false face, and he grabbed Bucky's hand. 

Bucky shook his head. "No, not him," he whispered without thinking.

"What do you mean,' not him'? Was that not Captain America we just saw? Captain America would _never_ hail Hydra. If I'd had any doubts about him having been brainwashed, that would have dispelled them."

Bucky realized he'd made a mistake and quickly tried to cover it up. "I mean, not now."

"Why not?"

"We'll, uh, find a better opportunity, soon." 

"If you say so," Loki mumbled, sounding unconvinced. 

Bucky had been wanting this, planning this, ever since Steve had told him about running into himself here. He'd refrained from reading Steve the riot act, but Steve brainwashing his younger self hadn't sat right with him. It didn't matter what the memory Steve had removed had been, or why he'd done it, or even that he'd done it to himself. Bucky hated the idea of Steve missing any time, or any memories. He hated the idea of anyone he loved being subjected to even an iota of what he'd suffered. 

He also knew that Steve, even though Steve would never mention it, beat himself up every day in regret for having worked for Hydra, and for having lived in ignorance of Bucky's situation. Bucky had tried to reassure him, convince him that it wasn't his fault. But Steve had always been a stubborn son of a bitch, with irrationally sky-high standards for himself. He hadn't listened. 

Bucky wasn't going to stand for it. He wasn't going to stand for this Steve working for SHIELD either. This Steve had been out of the ice for two weeks, and, as far as Bucky was concerned, that was long enough for Steve to have the wool pulled over his eyes. Frigga, who had clearly been expecting Bucky—specifically Bucky, for some reason that he chalked up to 'Goddess of Destiny' stuff—had hinted that he could get away with changing this without courting disaster. The Ancient One had all but backed her up. 

But first things first.

"It might be better off if we were invisible," Loki said, jolting Bucky out of his thoughts, as they approached the atrium. "While we do blend in, but I foresee complications if one of our hypothetical superiors decides to order us elsewhere from where we want to be."

"All right. But if we're invisible, how will I know where you are?"

"I can make us visible only to one another."

"Handy," Bucky said, just before he stopped being able to see his own feet.

"Take care not to run into anyone," Loki said. He was now a shimmering shadow standing beside Bucky. 

A couple of floors down, Bucky spotted Steve standing with Clint and the Hulk. Bucky's heart hurt to see Steve like this—a faint whiff of something dreamily wrong with him. He looked so stiff and unhappy. Not that he'd had ever been the life of the party, but Steve so recently out of the ice reminded Bucky painfully of his own few weeks out of deep freeze. The effort it took to appear relaxed, even as almost every single detail of the world created a wall of unfamiliarity… Bucky remembered all of it and hated that Steve had had to go through it, basically alone. Steve had told him that he hadn't started feeling close to anyone for a couple of years, not until meeting Sam and going through that Hydra ordeal with Natasha.

Then Pierce started talking to Steve, all phonily reasonable and authoritative, and Steve was _buying it_ , listening to him, nodding at Pierce's suggestions.

"I'll give you the fucking fist of Hydra," he whispered, angrily. 

Loki must have seen where Bucky was looking. "Hush," he said, and then added, "Are you certain he's been brainwashed? He seems as he did before we… I mean, when I first saw him. Self-righteous and dull."

"That's my best friend you're talking about," Bucky whispered back. But even he had to add, "He's had a rough time. He isn't always like that."

"I should hope so. For your sake." 

Nearby, Rollins, who must have thought himself alone in this corner of the room, started whispering into a cell phone, quietly enough that no one—no one visible, at least—could hear. 

"I said it's a fucking code red. The Asset has escaped. I repeat. It has escaped. We need to find it. _Now._ Especially before Captain Rogers sees it. I want all agents on the search… For him and for the scepter. Loki can wait. Unless they're together. Loki's the only one who knew where the Asset was."

"I see they have finally found out about us running away together. I had wondered how long it would take for them to realize that I rescued you." 

"That you…?" Bucky began, but immediately, the whole picture suddenly became clear. Loki's behavior right of the bat. The ease and willingness with which he'd followed Bucky out of the Shake Shack and onto an unknown adventure. Loki acted like they'd met before because they _had_. Even if it had only been a few minutes before. Loki had rescued Bucky, a fact that left Bucky reeling. Of all the timeline divergences stemming from Loki's escape that Bucky and Thor had drunkenly imagined the other night, this one was not on the list. 

Bucky had already felt himself getting along surprisingly easily with Loki, but this news made him warm to the guy even more. But he couldn't think him, not now, because, if he had this right, the guy he'd rescued had probably already thanked him. And had been left all alone in the Shake Shack. 

Poor jerk. 

But Bucky was happy for him—himself, sort of. Funny how rescuing himself hadn't crossed his mind. He'd been so focused on Steve for this plan. He wondered what his younger self was doing right now. Probably eating his hamburger as well as the one his companion had abandoned, along with himself. And, Bucky realized with a chill, probably headed right back into danger if he'd happened to see or hear anything about Captain America being in the middle of the alien attack. Steve had always been and would always be a magnet for Bucky, no matter how dangerous the circumstances. 

That Bucky didn't have the horror and guilt of having attacked Steve to keep him shamefully away. That Bucky didn't have the awareness that the people calling themselves SHIELD were actually his tormentors; Hydra had kept him pretty dazed, and it was only afterwards, from the documents Natasha leaked, that Bucky had learned all the alternate names for Hydra in different countries.

The documents… The thought brought a new idea, or, rather, strengthened one that he'd already been toying with. 

"I have an idea," Loki whispered, interrupting Bucky's thoughts again. "For curing your friend of his inconvenient brainwashing. Assuming, of course, that now is a better time than before."

"Now would be great," replied Bucky, who was already itching to get on to the second project. 

"I'm not sure if you know, but the cure is a very hard hit on the head. Preferably many hits on the head. If I understand his story correctly, he is more than just a man. He is halfway to something like an Asgardian. Therefore, his cure will require as drastic a blow as mine did. He will experience some momentary discomfort, but if I survived it, I'm sure he will, too. "

Loki's excited, wheedling tone didn't give Bucky a good feeling, but there wasn't time to do or say anything. Across the room, Steve suddenly transformed into Loki. A perfect replica, armour and everything. Everyone in the room started yelling, the Hulk loudest of all.

"Puny god won't stay down!" the Hulk bellowed. In two giant steps, he ran lumbered over to the Steve-Loki, who was protesting doggedly. 

Loki's plan could only work because no one in the room had known Steve for more than a couple of days. Bucky would have recognized Steve, by the set of his shoulders and the calm sternness of his attempts to reason with the Hulk, anywhere. No matter what he looked like. Hell, he'd already recognized him once in a completely different body.

The Hulk picked Steve up by both of his legs and started thrashing Steve against the floor. The room was so loud that no one noticed Loki's peals of laughter—laughter coming from a seemingly empty corner of the room. Bucky was only able to handle it because he'd seen Steve survive worse than this and escape without a scratch. 

As soon as the Hulk had finished thrashing Steve into the floor, Loki released the illusion, restoring Steve to himself. 

"Ohhhh, that felt wonderful to watch," Loki gasped amidst the panic around them.

"You sure that was necessary?" Bucky asked, white-knuckled, and fighting every instinct to go help his friend.

"Of course it was. If only because, in our short acquaintance, this is the biggest smile I've seen grace your face." He leaned conspiratorially closer. "Mischief _does_ have positive, and rather attractive, results."

Bucky had to bite his lip from smiling even harder at Loki's ridiculous attempts to—maybe?—flirt. "Smiling's a good look on you, too," he said, hoping Loki wouldn't take the compliment too seriously. Earnestly, and with another worried glance at Steve, he asked, "You think it worked?"

"I'm certain of it. I speak from experience."

To prove his point, Steve slowly, and gingerly sat up, looking 'better', the same way Loki did. No one else would have noticed, because they didn't know him like Bucky did, and they were too busy panicking and looking around for Loki, but, for a couple of seconds, Steve quietly clutched himself and mouthed, "Bucky's alive… Bucky's alive…" to himself, looking devastated and awakened in turn, too distracted to have even noticed the beatdown he'd just received. A new light shone out of his face, making it even more beautiful than usual.

Bucky's heart clenched painfully. It took everything he had not to run to Steve, announce himself, smooth down the hair that was sticking up. Never—never in a lifetime—had he had to sit still while someone beat Steve up. And now, now the hurt on Steve's face was even worse than anything the Hulk could have dished out. 

Luckily, Natasha and Hill ran over and started asking him questions to which only he would know the answer, proving that he'd been Steve all along. Steve stared up at them dazedly, clearly not sure yet what to believe or whom to trust or what to make of it all.

Bucky wondered when he ever would. But he wouldn't be able to stick around long enough to find out. 

"We should get off this floor. They'll know you're nearby," Bucky said quietly. "They'll figure out that was one of your pranks."

"They'll never find me."

"Not even Thor? Not even if he had this?" Bucky took out the tracker that Frigga had given him.

"How did you get that?" Loki asked, but he'd already grabbed Bucky's hand and started leading him out the door, just in time. Rollins and the others were in the process of ordering everyone to stay in. Bucky and Loki were the last ones to squeeze, invisibly, out. 

"Same place I got the letter."

"Well, she only has the one. Thor cannot have another."

Bucky knew this wasn't true, because the one he had came from a different universe. But he wasn't about to tell Loki that. 

"I have one more thing I want to do, if you don't mind taking the risk. If we get caught, I promise I'll keep Thor from taking you back to Asgard, if that's what you want."

Loki patted his hip, where, presumably, there must have been a pocket. "This letter is my passport. It trumps any orders the All-Father may have given him. He cannot take me anywhere I do not wish to go. And so, I ask, 'what next'? I must say, your requests so far have proven delightful fun."

"How would you like to start some chaos?" Bucky asked, knowing from Thor's stories that this would be the easiest way to get Loki on board. Although he already seemed to be on board with whatever Bucky wanted to do. Bucky wasn't used to that, from anyone other than Steve. 

"I would like nothing better. Whom do you intend to make the butt of the joke?" 

"Hydra."

"I had a hunch." Loki waggled his eyebrows in excitement, a sight that was almost as irresistibly ridiculous as Steve getting thrown around like a ragdoll. 

Bucky grinned back. He shouldn't have felt this comfortable around Loki. Even aside from all the… Lokiness… Bucky didn't feel this comfortable around strangers, period. Normally, Bucky would have chalked it up to a generous and friendly personality, but nothing he'd heard about Loki suggested such a personality. 

Whatever the cause, something about that kind of trust and camaraderie being directed towards him, after so many years alone and wary, combined with all the funny stories Thor had been telling Bucky over the past few days, left Bucky feeling friendly in return. 

"What's your plan?" Loki asked next.

"You know the room where we first met? Where they first brought me to you? They brought hard drives, too, and left them there. Hydra's entire dossier of projects and contacts. In you wanted it for some reason."

"How generous," Loki said archly. 

"I want to make that information public. I want to expose them," Bucky said. 

"Won't that expose you as well?"

"Yeah. But that's all right." Bucky liked the idea of taking control over what people knew about him. He'd tell them everything, all of it. And if Tony wanted to kill him, at least Steve wouldn't get dragged into it, not in the same way. There'd be no long-held secrets, no friendships broken over it. It wasn't as though Steve and Tony were friends right now anyway. And maybe, just maybe, getting the full story on Bucky all at once might help Tony to feel a little differently than he had. 

Most importantly, Steve would get the satisfaction of kicking Hydra's ass a full two years earlier. Steve had told him, even though it was already written all over his face all the time, how much learning that he'd spent two whole years working for Hydra had devastated him. This timeline was already fucked; If Bucky could spare Steve that, then he'd have done a good thing. 

There were only four Hydra agents stationed in the data room. All the rest had been sent to look for the Winter Soldier or for the scepter. Bucky and Loki took them out easily, without anyone ever seeing them. 

"You know how to do this?" Bucky asked Loki.

"How hard can it be?" 

Within a minute Loki, who had somehow learned to use a computer during his brief time on Earth, had helped Bucky locate all the files and typed up an introductory memo to the Associated Press, as well as posts to a variety of international news sources and social media outlets. They had everything locked and loaded. All they needed to do was press send on their attachments. 

"I'll allow you the honors," Loki said, waving graciously at the 'enter' button. It is your hurt to overcome, your vengeance to be had. 

Bucky pressed it with his metal index finger and watched everything start to flow, all around the world. 

The first thing he saw start to trend was the news that Hydra, under the guise of SHIELD, had ordered a nuke to be detonated over New York only a little bit ago.

"There was a bomb?" Loki asked, also watching. 

"Yeah, and it was a near thing."

"Huh," Loki replied. "Is that all?" 

Bucky double-checked to make sure that everything had finished sending. "Yeah, seems like it."

Loki began shuffling from foot to foot. "Before, I had hope you would be amendable to accompanying me on some travels. But with this sudden turn to willfulness, I no longer know…"

"I can't," Bucky said quickly, before Loki could continue, and make this even harder. There was nothing Bucky would have wanted more, if not for Steve. More planets, more exploration, more beautiful things to catalogue. It's what he'd dreamed of as a kid, listening to radio programs. But he couldn't. This wasn't his universe. This wasn't his path. And now that the other Steve knew Bucky was still alive, Bucky had to hope they'd cross paths soon, instead of Bucky running off with Loki. "I wish I could. I really do. But…"

"I understand," Loki snapped, sounding incredibly wounded and rejected, and not understanding at all. "You must go with your beloved. Your _Steve_."

Bucky didn't deny it and neither did he let Loki's tone bother him. Instead, he asked, as politely as he could, "What will you do now?" 

"Return to my lunch, I suppose. And then visit some of the pleasure systems that my… that Odin and Heimdall always barred me from. I shall lose myself in diversion until I find a new purpose."

Loki didn't sound excited about it, and a few weeks of aimless, lonely, empty diversion was probably the last thing someone like Loki needed, especially right now. 

"I can go with you as far as outside," Bucky said.

"As you like," Loki replied, pretending not to care.

By the time they got to the lobby, the news appeared to have proliferated enough to have sparked a battle. The Avengers, tired and weak, had found new strength, and had been joined by the actually loyal SHIELD members, as well as the NYPD and NYFD. With little more than a glance and a nod, Bucky and Loki threw themselves into the fight. Loki was nice enough to grab Rumlow by the hair and hold him down with Asgardian strength, long enough to let Rumlow see Bucky's true face, and Loki's, too. And then Bucky bashed it in, breaking that smug nose just as it scrunched in surprise.

Bucky had made sure that a list of every Hydra agent currently in the building got out first. Soon, everyone on that list had been rounded up for questioning. Pierce looked pretty rough. Bucky stopped fighting and looked around with satisfaction. He had been too busy hiding in his timeline to get to fight Hydra; it felt good to play even a little part. 

"How odd," he heard Loki mutter beside him. "I could swear that isn't one of my illusions, and yet…" 

Bucky looked at where Loki was pointing. It was himself—the other him—at the other side of the lobby. He'd run in, dragging a Hydra agent in each had, ones who'd been trying to run. 

"Bucky? Bucky! He was telling the truth! You _are_ alive!"

Even though they were visible now, glamoured into security guard outfits with visors pulled down, no one noticed Bucky or Loki. Steve was one of the ones who failed to notice them. He sprinted past Bucky and Loki and over to the other Bucky. 

Bucky's hearing couldn't pick up what they were saying as they hugged and checked that one another were real. Steve was fussing over Bucky's arm and new physique. Bucky was hiding his emotions by trying to tease. 

Bucky could read all that on their faces from across the room. All of it was as familiar as his own left foot.

What wasn't familiar was how all of this normal interaction suddenly shifted, until he was watching their faces grow closer and closer until—and he wasn't sure who started it—they were nuzzling one another's noses and nipping hesitantly at one another's lips.

"The hell?" Bucky whispered himself. "Steve doesn't… he never..."

Bucky had never considered the possibility that Steve felt the same way. But if _this_ Steve did, all the way back in 2012, and who knows how long before, then maybe…

Loki was feeling his arm. " _You_ are real, aren't you? You are. I know you are. Then what…?"

Bucky had no explanation for him, especially not when his sharp eyes spotted _his_ Steve nearby, also dressed like a security guard, and also staring at his alternate self with the alternate Bucky. He stood out, not only for his familiar shape and size and posture, but also, at least for the moment, the fact that he was the only other person standing stock-still, staring at the lovebirds. 

Bucky wished he could hear what they were saying. He wished he could hear what his Steve was thinking. 

A loud whistle broke his fixation. Other people had started to notice, too. Tony said something obnoxious that Bucky wasn't with it enough to process. Thor lumbered over and wanted to know who the lucky stranger was. Red-faced and more deliriously happy than Bucky had ever seen him, the younger Steve stopped kissing Bucky but refused to take his hands off him while introducing him, dazedly, to his new friends. He looked at Bucky at once point, obviously asking for some explanation as to why he was here and alive—not that Steve really cared. 

Bucky happened to make eye contact with his Steve from under the brims of both of their hats. They stared at one another, both frozen by what they'd seen. For the first time, Bucky felt brave enough to let what he felt show on his face. 

Steve smiled, and that was all Bucky needed. Steve made a gesture, beckoning Bucky outside. They didn't meet up until they were safely at the end of the block and around the corner. Then Steve stopped abruptly, letting Bucky catch up to him. 

"Everything good?" Steve's voice croaked on the question, and his expression completely failed to remain mission-focused. 

Bucky wasn't going to stand for it. "How long?"

Steve couldn't even pretend not to know what Bucky was asking. He shrugged his left side. "Since the minute you said you wouldn't leave that fucking Azzano facility without me. Probably before. I don’t know." Steve gulped. "Bucky…"

"Same," was all Bucky could say before he launched himself at Steve. 

Kissing Steve felt as good as it had looked from across the room. Steve's arms wrapped strongly around him, and Bucky could feel Steve's eyelashes brushing the side of his face. Steve kissed as though his lips were the only things keeping Bucky tethered to the earth and to this reality. For his part, Bucky gripped, probably a little too hard, with his metal hand, to keep Steve from disintegrating as Bucky had disintegrated a few days, or years ago, depending on how you looked at it.

He had no idea how long they stayed like that, wrapped up in one another, the whole world blotted out. But eventually, the soft coughs behind them grew loud enough to impinge on his consciousness. Slowly, they broke apart, still touching, just as their counterparts had continued to touch when forced to engage with other stimuli.

Loki was standing patiently beside them.

"Touching as this scene, and the, ahem, other one were… Would someone please explain what in the world is going on?"

"Hey again, Loki," Steve said. "What are you doing with Bucky?"

"You left me with him."

"Not this one."

Bucky felt his eyes grow wide. "You… You helped him?"

"For all your need for secrecy, Captain," Loki said, "you've given away the show rather quickly. Has it even been an hour?"

"I couldn't leave you like that," Steve said, ignoring Loki's question and answering Bucky's instead. "And did you… I mean, how did he… I mean, me… know that you were alive. I heard him say so."

"I couldn't leave you like that either."

"And the Hydra leak?" Steve asked next.

"Guilty." Bucky jerked his thumb at Loki. "He helped." 

"Wait," Loki said. "You were not brainwashed?"

"The other me was," Steve said, at about the same time that Bucky finally explained, "We're from the future. A different future."

Loki sagged against the glass wall behind him. He patted his pocket where Frigga's letter lay. "This explains quite a bit. Such as how a man who has spent the last seventy years as a brainwashed captive managed to obtain a letter from Frigga."

"Such as that, yeah," Bucky agreed.

"She also said to destroy the Tesseract as soon as I could. You wouldn't happen to know why she might have requested that, do you?"

"Let's just say it's a great idea," Steve replied.

"She wrote that I was to follow Bucky wherever he might invite me." The wheedling tone had come back into Loki's voice, and there was no mistaking what he was asking. 

"What do you think?" Bucky asked Steve. "We have a spare suit. This universe is already different. Taking him out of it can't do much more harm. It might even help. And Thor would get a kick out of it."

Loki started to inch away. "If your plan is to rescue me from Thor's capture only to hand me over to another one's, then no thanks, never mind."

"You wouldn't be a captive," Steve said, but Bucky had a better idea for how to get Loki on board.

"He's had a breakdown," he told Loki smoothly, suggestively. "He's not the golden boy you know. You'll hardly recognize him. You can give him hell about it. You'll love it."

"Truly?" Loki looked to Steve for affirmation.

Steve nodded. "It's all true." 

"And what of the me in your world? Wouldn't I get in the way?"

Bucky and Steve shared a glance. "He isn't around anymore," Steve said.

A flash of fear passed over Loki's pale face, but he squashed the reaction pretty quickly. "I see."

Bucky realized he'd been holding Steve's hand the whole time. He also realized that they should probably get a move on; they had stayed too close to the Tower for too long. "What do you say, Loki?"

Loki straightened and suddenly looked like a prince again—resolute and clear-headed. "Let's go. First things first, however."

"What's that?" Steve asked, squeezing Bucky's flesh hand and looking happy enough to burst. Happy enough, indeed to put up with almost any bullshit Loki might throw their way.

"I would still like to try the shake."

"What do you say, Steve?" Bucky said, nodding in agreement. "Shake Shack?"

"It's too close to that schwarma place that they'll all go to in a minute. How about when we get back? Friday can order delivery."

Bucky answered with a quick kiss. He could get used to this. He _would_ get used to this.

"Sounds great."


End file.
